Am I getting too heady for you, my dear? I apologize. I am nothing more than an armchair philosopher and not a particularly dedicated one at that. At least not anymore. I spent ten years in psychotherapy—just once a week, nothing too serious—mostly talking through the contradictions and inconsistencies of organized religion. I bet you didn’t know that about me, did you? And you know, the older I get (I’m an ancient forty-seven as I write to you today), the less Destiny and Fate—and their cousin Faith, for that matter—concern me. For some, the opposite is true. Men and women on their deathbeds, old as the Appalachians, wondering what it was “all about.” So foolish. I must admit, perhaps to the detriment of your esteem for me, that my sympathy for such wonderers is minimal. Imagine being given a life and not understanding until its ugly end that the point was to live it.
So I do not believe it was Fate or Destiny, yet on some level I do believe it was “meant to be.” Allow me to tell you the story of how I was cast on the show, and you can decide for yourself whether it was a cocreative act, the Universe being my cocreator, or just a coincidence.
My friend Nancy had been visiting me in New York City. (Her name is Alaya now, but she was certainly Nancy then.) We were (and still are) friends from our undergraduate days at Boston College, despite the fact that the first time I met her I loathed her, but only by association. She looked like a young Jessica Lange, which I found intimidating, and she was dating my freshman-year roommate, whom I hated, and he hated me, if you can believe that! I’m not sure there was any solid reason for all of this hatred; just a visceral reaction among eighteen-year-olds from different corners of the country. So ridiculous! When Alaya and I discuss it now, as we sometimes do, we wonder whether we were all locked in some sort of vicious love triangle in a past life.
I don’t know whether I believe in past lives, but they are fun to imagine, aren’t they? I’ve done two past-life regressions, if you can believe it. In one, I was a Philadelphian businessman in the early 1900s! I had a wife, two daughters, and a big belly. I must have been doing well financially, because we lived in a lovely brownstone with elaborate moldings and ceiling medallions. In the other, I was a goat farmer somewhere in the mountains. Could it have been Nepal? Bhutan? Somewhere around there. The location doesn’t matter because I don’t think I, the goat farmer, could have picked out the town on a map. I was just a quiet little man with sun-darkened and -hardened skin whose goats were taken by an invading army. That’s the part at which I snapped myself out of the regression. Too sad to experience (again?).
Where was I? Oh, yes, Nancy was at my apartment for a visit from San Francisco. Or maybe she was living in Seattle at that time. I don’t remember, but I do recall she had recently completed a course to “awaken” her “light body.” While I don’t understand exactly what that entails, I gather it’s about expanding one’s spiritual consciousness. I’ve thought about awakening my own light body, but my gut tells me to leave it sound asleep. Nobody enjoys being roused from a good, solid nap. I can guarantee you my light body would be really crabby.
I confessed to Nancy that I felt as though I was meant to be doing something different with my career—I was working as a magazine editor—but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. She suggested I ask the Universe for guidance. I wasn’t quite sure how to do that until I read a couple of books by Caroline Myss, in which she explained that if you ask the Universe for help, it will provide help. But the catch, she said, is you must put your complete trust in the Universe. Otherwise, you’re just asking the Universe to give you what you want, not what the Universe knows you need.
Are you still with me, Fanny? This might be too wingding for you. Or it might offend your religious beliefs. If so, I’m sorry to have lost you, but I’m just telling a story.
So one night before bed, I performed some deep-breathing exercises, calming my thoughts so that I could focus on having a conversation with the Universe, and I said these exact words aloud: “Universe, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, but if you point me in the right direction, I promise to follow, no questions asked.” And that was it. I went to sleep.
Two weeks later, I received an e-mail from a casting agent named Barbara Barna asking me if I would like to audition for a show called What Not to Wear. The producers were recasting the male lead and looking for a replacement with some fashion experience. I returned her e-mail, attaching a recent photo and résumé, and we set up an audition for the next day.
When I agreed to the audition, I never thought I’d get the job. I showed up for that first audition, and Barbara pointed a video camera at me and asked me to state my name. Then on a nearby television she played a VHS tape of women walking down the streets of Manhattan and asked me to provide color commentary on their outfits. You can probably imagine the critiques I gave. “Suntan hose! How come nobody told me it was 1972 in Boca Raton?” “Your mom called, she wants her jeans back. And she’s not sure who your father is.” “Honey, that much titty is completely inappropriate—unless you’re stripping or having a mammogram.”
I left the audition thinking there was no way in hell anyone could have found value in that claptrap, but by the time I got back to my desk, I had received a voice mail asking if I was available for a callback two days later. Evidently, I was just the sort of moderately snarky homosexual they were looking for.
When I arrived at that first callback, there were several men in the reception area outside the studio awaiting their turn to enter. The TV was playing episodes of What Not to Wear, which I had still not seen. (There was no video on demand back in those days, Fanny. We were savages.) So I sat and watched the show.
And I hated it.
Good Lord, was it awful! I thought, If this is the kind of program they want to make, I am the absolute wrong person for it. The way Stacy and Wayne, the guy they were replacing, spoke to the women on the show felt so mean-spirited and judgmental. Sure, at the time I got a kick out of criticizing people’s clothes, but I didn’t actually care what they were wearing and I certainly didn’t want anyone to feel like shit about herself for it. That might not make sense, but I truly thought I could crack a few jokes, help women shop for cute stuff, and send them on their way. Buh-bye! What Not to Wear and I didn’t seem like a perfect match.
As I sat on the edge of my folding chair, my inner dialogue went something like this:
“Let’s go, dipshit.”
“No. We’re staying.”
“Shut up and get your ass out of this chair now.”
“Nope. We promised the Universe we would stay.”
“We lied.”
“It wasn’t a lie. We said we’d follow the Universe’s guidance, no questions asked!”
“Fuck that. I’m outta here.”
And so I got up from my chair, fully intending to leave and that’s when the casting agent opened the door and called my name.
“Clinton Kelly?” she said.
And I replied, “That’s me.”
And she said, “Come on in.”